Here is the full transcript of actress Jessica McCabe’s TEDx Talk: Failing at Normal: An ADHD Success Story at TEDxBratislava conference.
MP3 audio:
Jessica McCabe – Actress
Hello, brains! I say that to you because, if you think about it, it wasn’t really you that decided to come here today. It was your brain.
And whether you decided to walk, or drive, take a taxi, or ride a bike, that decision was made by your brain. Behavior, all behavior, is affected by the brain. This is a story about my brain.
So, I was a smart kid. By 18 months, I was speaking in full sentences. By third grade, I was scoring post-high school on standardized tests I had, as all my teachers agreed, so much potential I was also struggling. I didn’t have many, any, friends outside of books. I was easily overwhelmed.
I spaced out in class. I lost things constantly. And trying to get my brain to focus on anything. I wasn’t excited about was like trying to nail jello to the wall. But I was smart, so nobody was worried.
It wasn’t until middle school, when I was responsible for getting myself to classes on time and remembering to bring my own homework, that being smart wasn’t enough anymore, and my grades started to suffer.
My mom took me to the doctor and, after a comprehensive evaluation, I was diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, ADHD. If you’re not familiar with ADHD, it has three primary characteristics: inattention, impulsivity, and hyperactivity.
Some people with ADHD have more of the inattentive presentation. Those are the daydreamers, the space cadets. Some have more of the hyperactive-impulsive presentation. Those are the kids that usually get diagnosed early.
But the most common presentation is a combination of both. My doctor and my parents decided that, given my shiny, new diagnosis, maybe stimulant medication would succeed where spankings and lectures had failed. So I tried it, and it worked.
The first time I took my medication, it was like putting on glasses and realizing I could see without squinting. I could focus. And without changing anything, my GPA went up a full point. Honestly, it was kind of miraculous.
By 14, I had friends that liked me. By 15, I had published my first poem. I got a boyfriend.
By 17, I knew I wanted to be a journalist. My local college had a program that would guarantee admission to USC. They had a really great journalism program. So, I signed up at my local college and I started taking classes.
I moved in with my boyfriend. Things were going great, until they weren’t. I started having trouble making it to class on time. I aced a statistics course, but I forgot to sign up in time, so I never got the credit. I took classes so I could help my boyfriend with his career, but I completely lost sight of mine.
I never made it to USC. By 21, I dropped out of college and moved back home. Over the next ten years, I started and quit, or was fired from, 15 jobs. I ruined my credit. I got married, and was divorced within a year.
At this point, I was 32, and I had no idea what I was doing with my life, besides reading self-help books that didn’t seem to be helping.
What happened to all that potential? Was I not trying? No! I worked harder than anyone I knew. I didn’t even have time for friends. I was that busy. I had potential, though.
So, my failure was clearly my fault. I just hadn’t done what I need to do to reach it. And, honestly, I was tired of trying, putting more effort into life than everyone else and falling farther and farther behind. At this point, I could have given up on myself, I could have decided that everyone who’d thought I had potential was wrong.
But I didn’t, because I knew that it was my behavior that had gotten me here, and behavior is affected by the brain, and my brain has ADHD. Looking at my behavior, I knew: even with medication, even as an adult, my ADHD was still interfering with my life, and what I needed to know was how and why, and, more importantly, what could I do about it.
I started to do some research, and I found a lot of great information. I found a lot of bad information too, but that’s another talk.
But there’s good information out there: Websites, podcasts, talks, by researchers and medical professionals; books that would have been way more helpful than the self-help books. I’d been using that were clearly written for normal – well, there’s no normal – neurotypical brains. A lot of what I found, though, was either super technical or seemed like it was written for parents and teachers trying to deal with ADHD kids.
There wasn’t a lot that seemed intended for us, the people who have ADHD. So, I started a YouTube channel. I had no idea how to start a YouTube channel, but I started a YouTube channel. I almost called it “How Not To ADHD,” because that was about all I knew at the time. But my boyfriend, Edward, talked me out of it.
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